Luciano Canova

Behavioral Designer

Research Summary

I am a researcher working on behavioral design and happiness measurement. I am curious and deeply passionate about human behavior and its determinants.

Teaching behavioural economics, I strongly believe the use of experimental method can help designing evidence based public policies. Choice architecture may be improved in order to improve decision making.

iNudge

RCT designed with Tommaso Reggiani and Mattia Nardotto in collaboration with Confartigianato Varese.

Experimentation ongoing: first results to be delivered after summer 2017.

Soccermetrics

I am working on a bunch or project using soccer data to investigate empirical questions: does changing the coach of a team produce an impact on productivity of players? Is salary of football players correlated with their productivity?.

MiPiace

MiPiace is a WindowsPhone app collecting Opendata available from Comune di Milano and integrating them in the construction of a Quality of Life index. Relevant information can help to understand better problems and vulnerability of specific areas of a city.

Each year, Ecosistema Urbano and Sole 24 Ore, to quote only two examples, publish a report in which the Italian provinces are analyzed with respect to various dimensions of well-being in order to build a ranking in terms of quality of life. Baseline indicators are objective and reflect the quality of services and other key indicators, such as income and characteristics of the environment.

In line with these experiences, Mipiace offers a possibility of finer disaggregation within a complex urban reality like Milan. The level of disaggregation of the available information allows us to present, in fact, a cross-section of the city with respect to the areas of decentralization.

Voices From the Blogs

AppyMeteo

Appymeteo is a free Android app , developed to collect information useful for scientific research on subjective well-being, a relevant dimension of quality of life.

What

Appymeteo is designed in close connection with the app on the weather forecasts . The purpose is to produce weather forecasts of happiness (both individual as well as for specific geographical areas).

How does it work?

We use Experience Sampling method (collection of real-time information) . Once you've downloaded the app , the user fills out a brief profile with demographic information ( gender, age , employment status, area of residence) that will be used later for statistical analysis . The app sends at different and random times of the day push notifications containing a question about their perception of happiness ( " How happy are you from 1 to 10? "), which are then used to construct forecasts. The user can look at an interactive map of the Italian territory with the weather of happiness for each province and has the possibility of collecting a sort of diary of his/her responses. Greenreport.it hosts permanently a link to the app in the home page and contains data analysis end elaborations.

The game

Users are also given the opportunity to engage in a ' questionnaire of happiness ' with their friends (via Facebook or Twitter account login ) , on the basis of the success of the app based on gamification such as Ruzzle.

Commercial potential

Appymeteo is born with scientific purposes , but there are also major commercial possibilities . A massive use of the same app, with contacts and visibility in the media and on the web, firstly allows us to purchase advertising (banners, sponsorships) .Secondly, the structure of the game, based on real time questionnaire, also allows to insert specific questions of interest, which may be agreed with the marketing area of a company involved.

Scientific coordination

Andrea Biancini, researcher and lecturer at the University GARR Consortium of Milan Bicocca. IT project management expert and behavioural psychology

Luciano Canova, PhD Economics . Researcher of CRESA (Research Center of Experimental and Applied Epistemology), directed by Matteo Motterlini. His research interests are focused on the economy experimental and happiness.